Reuters' top 40 pictures of the year.
2005: The sports year in weird.

Pioneer Days

Here, you can find Sarah's first ever hand built Pioneer home.

Been away for awhile. I have been in and out of Ottawa, Toronto, Mississauga and Oshawa training for the company I now work for. Yes, I have jumped out of the Mailing Solutions industry and into the Extended Care industry. I now work for a company called Arjo Canada, here in Ottawa. So it has been a very busy month and will continue to be until the new year.

Christmas is soon here and I have to get out and get shopping!!! Usually I am done by the end of November, but there were too many changes this year. This weekend I will start and finish. And because the holidays are coming, I hope I can get the old camera out again and update some photos.

Hope everyone is well and you all have a wonderful Christmas!

Find out how much caffeine it would take to kill you.
Coolest pictures of coffee you'll see all day.
National Wildlife's photography contest winners.

Tips for Handling Telemarketers & Junk Mail

1) Three Little Words That Work

The three little words are: "Hold On, Please..."

Saying this, while putting down your phone and walking off (instead of hanging-up immediately) would make each telemarketing call so much more time-consuming that boiler room sales would grind to a halt.

Then when you eventually hear the phone company's "beep-beep-beep" tone, you know it's time to go back and hang up your handset, which has efficiently completed its task.

These three little words will help eliminate telephone soliciting.

2) Do you ever get those annoying phone calls with no one on the other end?

This is a telemarketing technique where a machine makes phone calls and records the time of day when a person answers the phone.

This technique is used to determine the best time of day for a "real" sales person to call back and get someone at home.

What you can do after answering, if you notice there is no one there, is to immediately start hitting your # button on the phone, 6 or 7 times, as quickly as possible This confuses the machine that dialed the call and it kicks your number out of their system. Gosh, what a shame not to have your name in their system any longer !!!

3) Junk Mail Help:

When you get "ads" enclosed with your phone or utility bill, return these "ads" with your payment. Let the sending companies throw their own junk mail away.

When you get those "pre-approved" letters in the mail for everything from credit cards to 2nd mortgages and similar type junk, do not throw away the return envelope.

Most of these come with postage-paid return envelopes, right? It costs them more than the regular 37 cents postage "IF" and when they receive them back.

It costs them nothing if you throw them away! The postage was around 50 cents before the last increase and it is according to the weight. In that case, why not get rid of some of your other junk mail and put it in these cool little, postage-paid return envelopes.

One of Andy Rooney's (60 minutes) ideas.

Send an ad for your local chimney cleaner to American Express.
Send a pizza coupon to Citibank.
If you didn't get anything else that day, then just send them their blank application back!
If you want to remain anonymous, just make sure your name isn't on anything you send them.

You can even send the envelope back empty if you want to just to keep them guessing! It still costs them 37 cents.

The banks and credit card companies are currently getting a lot of their own junk back in the mail, but folks, we need to OVERWHELM them. Let's let them know what it's like to get lots of junk mail, and best of all they're paying for it...Twice!

Let's help keep our postal service busy since they are saying that e-mail is cutting into their business profits, and that's why they need to increase postage costs again. You get the idea !

If enough people follow these tips, it will work ---- I have been doing this for years, and I get very little junk mail anymore.

Hi

Jayna's first grade one report card yesterday was very good. She received all A's and B's for the technical stuff and excellent and good for the life skills. :)

Also, after months of agonizing teething as a baby.......Jayna lost her first tooth this morning. She was ecstatic!

Holly

Happy Birthday to Mitchell Sweitzer...turning 4 this Tuesday! Here is a link to his birthday party photos from today. And this way to see a small video.

Been out of town for a week, back now. And winter is here!

If you're going to steal your mom's video camera and sell it, make sure you remove mom's homemade sex tape from the camera first.

Five to nine percent of 911 calls in Eastern Ontario are legitimate police emergencies.

News flash...

It's been awhile since I actually wrote anything here. I've been "adding" things. So, what's new...

I've been slowly plugging away at my Electro-Mechanical course on Monday, Tuesday and every other Wednesday nights.

Mom's business is all closed up for the season and already we can't wait for March to roll around again.

Camping season is over (I don't do winter camping), can't wait for Spring.

Because of my course, I miss curling. I have not heard any of the GACL Slop, so I will have to take a Monday night off and drop into the Hylands Curling Club.

Sarah is already getting on to me about Christmas and the decorations that go along with it. She wants to decorate now and I say it's too early. To please her I will dig out the decorations this weekend and get them ready...but NOT put them up.

I've also been thinking of a friend. I believe (and you know it) that your an extremely "strong" person. You will fight through this !

For those of you that know; November 21st is a new beginning and I am really excited about it. A little nervous, but ready, willing and able. For those that don't know, I will tell you when I can. I made a promise.

Finally, something that we would like to share with everyone. I don't know how it started, but it must have been a boring day. Koziol Bros. has a "short" film ready for the general public. After attending the "closed to the public" premier screening last Saturday afternoon in Todd's living room, "HED" is now being released to all with rave reviews about a stellar cast.

So, the independant flick is now available at the producers personal web site. You can view it there, with one little problem. The totally awesome version is a huge file which could take you 24 hours to download/view it and the smaller reduced quality file takes no time. Go ahead and try those files, but let me tell you this...after watching it on DVD, you will not experience the awesome production and quality in the "reduced quality" file.

The best thing to do is order your own personal DVD. You get the excitement of seeing Sarah in her first film. The cost of this DVD (as of today) is "the promise of receiving all Koziol Bros. films to be released in the future". This is a special deal and we do not know how long we can hold on to this deal. Just send me an email for your copy.

There is a warning...If the demand is so great, delivery may be delayed. And if you don't order one, you might just receive it for Christmas.

The DVD includes the complete 9 minute movie and added Bonus Features. I called down to the Marketing Department yesterday for another promotional copy and I was informed that there was NONE left at the moment, I have to wait for the next batch from production. It's going to be a hit!

Before I sign off. I heard that a certain female in the cast is already writing more scripts for her future endeavors.